You CAN do it too!

Dragon Egg

A scaled dragons egg, made with a Styrofoam egg, thumb tacks, and fingernail polish!

I loved doing this project. It was an idea fashioned by others but there are many ways to make a dragon egg but I liked the look of the finished egg made this way. In the little bowl are 200 thumb tacks, I thought that would be enough to cover the egg but as it turned out I needed another 129 tacks. Also, I bought the first package at Staples and there were 200 in the package, and, the second package I bought at Wall Mart 100 in a package, but, the tacks from Staples were larger than the Wall Mart ones. I also bought the nail polish at Wall Mart and just looked for the cheapest I could find in the colours I wanted. Overall, this project took 3 days to complete due to having to place and put two coats of polish on the tacks and allow them to dry properly.

To begin, I put the tacks into a piece of Styrofoam board. Then, I put the darker base colour on top of the tack. Nail polish goes on very easily and covers. Next I used the glitter polish once the base coat was dry and set.

Here are the tacks with the heads covered in both base colour and glitter top coat.

I started inserting the tacks at the wider end with the first in the middle working around so that each tack partially covered those above and beside. Then I just placed them in a spiral form being sure to overlap each tack slightly. In this way, the preceding tacks are held in place.

Here is the egg partially covered showing the placing of the overlapping tacks, and don’t they look like scales?

This was as far as 200 tacks went, (no kidding!) and these were the Staples tacks, which were just a little big larger around than the Wall Mart tacks.

Here is the finished dragon egg. I put a few different coloured tacks (scales) here and there for interest. Now tell me if that doesn’t look like a dragon egg! Ask any child, they will know and love them. The surprising thing about the finished egg was the weight of it with all those tacks in it. So when I finished the center tack at the small end, I took clear polish and coated it all. You could also use a drop of glue on that middle tack just to be sure it doesn’t come out. There are lots of different ideas to display the egg. Mine is just sitting in a cup with dragon like scales on it, or you could make a small nest and place it inside a cloche jar or even just set it on a nest somewhere. Wouldn’t the kids be surprised to see a dragon egg in the garden? Use your imagination!

This cup I bought recently at a craft sale just seemed to “go” with the egg. Anyway, for now this is where it will rest until I decide where to hide it in the garden for spring! I hope you will give it a try. It’s relatively inexpensive to make, although I must say the Styrofoam egg was hard to find at this time of year (Christmas). You can stock up when Easter rolls around and make many nests filled with the eggs!

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What a beautiful egg. So pretty. But how long did this take to make? I really admire your patience. I am not so good at doing repetitive projects. No wonder I never became an artist. I am listening to music but planning to cook dinner in a jiffy. Pleasant evening to you!

The dragons egg took about two days overall. I’m feeling bad, I’m working on so many crafts right now but I’ve not even posted any on the blog! Bad bad girl I am! Making some little fairy doors to help my sis out as she is going in a craft sale soon!